Plot
Two relationships in North London simultaneously draw to a close. Jed, a journalist is living with his long-term girlfriend, Cheryl, with the couple regularly seeing Jed's best friend Marcus and his girlfriend, Sophie. Compared to Marcus and Sophie, Jed and Cheryl's relationship is tired and dysfunctional which Jed tries to put right by suggesting marriage. When he asks her, Cheryl turns him down because of the lack of romantic chemistry in their relationship. In the meantime, Jed is preparing to interview the pretentious French film writer/director, Thierry Grimandi. Grimandi, who lives and works on the basis that he considers himself lucky "firstly because I am French, secondly because I make movies, and thirdly because I understand love" is shown regularly to give us the benefit of his advice.
Jed and Cheryl turn to a relationship counseller but when asked if he loves Cheryl, Jed can't bring himself to say "Yes", and instead covers up by saying of course, he "loves her TO BITS". Cheryl is unimpressed as Jed cannot declare his love without adding a qualification, and as they begin to drift apart, she rediscovers the pleasures of being more independent. Jed looks to his friend, Marcus for help and for advice from Grimandi who tries to school him in the French philosophy of love. The scenes as Jed travels around London on his bicycle cleverly give the city an appearance of Paris. In the meantime, Marcus meets an old girlfriend, keen on travel, rediscovering his youth and finding that the flame between them burns as brightly as ever. He resolves to leave Sophie and go away with his old flame.
Jed has long liked Sophie without realising that he was falling in love with her and even when Marcus and his new love leave London on the Eurostar to Paris, Jed lacks the courage to tell Sophie of his true feelings, even though she is aware of them herself. We see Jed undertaking the on-stage interview with Thierry Grimandi, for which he has been preparing and only then does he begin to understand his own feelings as he listens to the film director's pontifications. Jed rushes off to see Sophie, who greets him warmly, whilst we see Cheryl enjoying her new independence. We are left to assume that all live happily ever after.......
Read more about this topic: French Film
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“There comes a time in every mans education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Jamess great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofnessthat is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually taken placeMthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, gone on.”
—James Thurber (18941961)